Congress has released text messages between top U.S. diplomats referencing attempts by the Trump administration to force Ukraine to investigate both Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and the 2016 election. Though legal and national security experts have confirmed the seriousness of this evidence, Fox News figures insisted there was no evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement or claimed that there was such evidence but that the interaction was nevertheless “entirely appropriate.”
Fox figures dubiously claim diplomats’ text messages show no Trump/Ukraine quid pro quo
Written by Zachary Pleat
Published
On October 3, three Democratic House committee chairmen released dozens of text messages showing communication among American diplomats William Taylor, Gordon Sondland, and Kurt Volker, who were assigned to Ukraine and the European Union, among others. As NPR reported, several of the text messages conditioned a White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on his government helping to “‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016,” an apparent reference to a debunked conspiracy theory meant to absolve Russia of interference in the presidential election. NPR also reported that some of those texts were about laying the groundwork for President Donald Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky in which he repeatedly urged Ukraine to investigate Biden, his possible rival in the 2020 election. Trump, who has repeatedly denied that he engaged in a quid pro quo, has since publicly called on Ukraine to investigate Biden.
Some of the text messages strongly suggested that military aid was used as leverage to get Ukraine to cooperate with Trump’s demands for investigations. News reports have revealed that Trump ordered that military aid to Ukraine be withheld shortly before his call to Ukraine’s president.
Legal commentators have emphasized that these text messages clearly show that Trump demanded investigations in exchange for favors. NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner wrote on Twitter that the texts “prov[e] an illegal quid pro quo” and should spur an FBI investigation. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said of the texts: “It’s great evidence. It’s a prosecutor’s dream. … This builds the case that there was an exchange, a bribery, a quid pro quo, whatever you want to call it.” CNN legal and national security analyst Asha Rangappa explained: “In legal terms, we would call this ‘duress.’ You're placing someone under duress, under pressure to be able to do something in order to get something they urgently need or want.”
Volker denied that there was quid pro quo during his testimony before Congress on October 3, claiming that “at no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden.” But as New York University law professor Ryan Goodman pointed out on Twitter, Volker was contradicted by a May 9 story in The New York Times that described Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani planning a meeting with the Ukrainian president as “part of a monthslong effort by the former New York mayor and a small group of Trump allies” to, among other things, potentially “damage Mr. Biden, the early front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.”
Yet Fox News figures are saying there was no quid pro quo -- or claiming that there was, but it’s “entirely appropriate.”
Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy: It’s “not only normal, it’s entirely appropriate” for Trump to ask Ukraine to help investigate the 2016 election. “There’s always quid pro quo when foreign countries deal with each other.”
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From the October 4 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom
BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): Do you see a smoking gun lurking, whether obvious or not? If you're the president watching all this, what would concern you the most?
ANDREW MCCARTHY (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Well, I’d be most concerned about the way Americans are consuming the coverage, you know. There’s a lot of reporting that’s simply inaccurate about what’s going on. For example, this whole idea that there is an impeachment inquiry. There’s not. The idea that there are subpoenas. There aren't. The whole thing -- this is all kabuki theater at this point. And I think a lot of people are, you know, consuming it as if it were true on face value. And I really think if I were the White House, what I would be worried about is breaking through that.
HEMMER: I'm not quite sure I'm entirely clear on what you're saying there. If you're the White House, you're concerned about what, specifically?
MCCARTHY: Well, I'm concerned, for example -- let's take one thing. The term “quid pro quo,” right? There’s always quid pro quo when foreign countries deal with each other. The issue is not whether there was a quid pro quo. It would be bizarre if two countries were dealing with each other and it wasn't an exchange. They’re always pursuing their interests. The question here is, was there a corrupt quid pro quo? That is, was the president leveraging his power over foreign affairs exclusively to get the Ukrainians basically to work on the Trump 2020 campaign.
On the other hand, if what the president was actually doing was trying to leverage the Ukrainians to assist in Attorney General [William] Barr's legitimate Justice Department investigation into the investigations that were attendant to the 2016 campaign, that's not only normal, it’s entirely appropriate. But if it's pitched to the public as if “was there a quid pro quo about 2016,” what the public is taking from that is that -- the suggestion that there was a corrupt, improper deal. And that is brought to them in the context of being told that there is an impeachment inquiry over it, and that there are subpoenas pending demanding that the executive branch turn over information that it's withholding about this.
Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth: Congressional testimony showed “it wasn’t about a quid pro quo at all.”
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From the October 4 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
PETE HEGSETH (FOX & FRIENDS WEEKEND CO-HOST): These closed door sessions normally are about as private as Times Square. And including [Rep.] Adam Schiff and all of them. If there’s one nugget, one thing, while the hearing is going on, they will rush to the cameras, text a reporter, let them know, this is the new bombshell to run on CNN and MSNBC for the next two days. Instead, they walk past the cameras. Maybe, just maybe, for nine hours this public servant, this diplomat, told the truth about the reality of why there was pressure put on Ukraine, that it wasn't about a quid pro quo at all. It was about corruption. There is a new prosecutor, there is a new opportunity. And President Trump was doing that.
...
HEGSETH: Yeah, so I went and read these text messages where they specifically say the president does not want a quid pro quo. He wants them to stop the corrupt way they do business. And then we’ll be willing to invest the hard-earned taxpayer dollars, that that's always been his lodestar. You pay taxes, you’re a citizen of this country, the money we take from you ought be used well. Why would it go to a corrupt government? And especially if there are companies where former vice presidents are enriching themselves based on -- this is nepotism. This boomerangs right back on Joe Biden, not because he’s a potential rival in 2020, but because he used his position potentially to enrich his family members, which people ought and rightfully be frustrated about.
Fox chief national correspondent Ed Henry: “It’s very clear from that exchange that at least one of the diplomats is saying no, no, no, the president’s not tying these two together, let’s be clear. … Are the Democrats going to look at this fairly and look at the whole picture, or are they going to try to prove a narrative that they believe to try to impeach him?”
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From the October 4 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
ED HENRY (FOX CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT): Democrats are going to pounce on this, but they have been pouncing on everything the president says, right? But we had a lot of the president's allies in the last week or so saying the transcript with the Ukrainian president didn't show that the president wanted to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, that it's not clear. Well, now it's sort of clear from the president's own words. He does -- because later in that news conference he also said he does want Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and now he's saying hey, maybe China ought to as well because of business dealings over there, the private equity fund.
Here's the point: The point is the president is not hiding that he wants an investigation of all of this. The question is going to be: Was it tied to U.S. aid to Ukraine? Could they prove that? So far there has been no evidence of that. The president has denied that it was directly tied or that there was any quid pro quo and I think the big picture point is that no matter what is found here, the Democrats moved forward on this impeachment inquiry before they had the transcript of the call. Before they had the text messages that we're going to talk about back and forth between some of the diplomats. And so Adam Schiff has a bit of a credibility problem in terms of them going forward with all of this before they had the facts. The president is going to have to make sure the facts are on his side though. He has been honest and transparent publicly about how he wants this investigated and by the way it's put a spotlight on Joe and Hunter Biden in a way that the Democrats didn't want.
Fox Business anchor Melissa Francis: “It says right here, there’s no quid pro quo.”
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From the October 4 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered
JESSICA TARLOV (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): So there was a quid pro quo. We now know that there were two things on the table.
[CROSSTALK]
MELISSA FRANCIS (CO-HOST): It says right here, there’s no quid pro quo.
…
TARLOV: We learned that U.S. officials were working together with Rudy Giuliani to draft a statement that the Ukrainian government was going to put out, saying that they would investigate Joe Biden. It wasn't good enough to say we’ll investigate corruption, which the president pretends that's what he's interested in. It had to name Burisma specifically. Sondland took five hours to respond to that text. He then comes back after Bill Taylor says very -- twice he says: "We don't exchange assistance for --”
FRANCIS: Here, I’ve got it right here. “I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” One reason why you would take five hours to respond to that, doesn't that feel like a setup? I mean, doesn’t that feel like one of those situations --
[CROSSTALK]
FRANCIS: Well, but one of those situations where you say, "Gosh, do you feel bad about the fact that you murdered that person last night," in a text so you respond to it? I mean it just -- it sounds -- I don't know. It's a little bit difficult to believe.
The other point that I would say is that, so you would have to prove that he has no interest in ferreting out corruption in these spots in order for it to be strictly that this is about a political campaign. And he does have a responsibility to not send my tax dollars to a corrupt nation. And you have to look into things that smell of corruption.